The Graying of the Mothers

I've had a dear, close friend tell me she is backing away from adoption activism. Here's another strong voice for the BSE that is silenced by the fact that, as we get older, our health is not as good and we get so tired.....tired of the BS, the infighting, the egregious machinations of the industry and its proponents. It's harsh in the land of natural family preservation. There is either the faction that wants to silence us or the others that think we need to march in lock-step or the others that think their way is the better way and kick us to the curb. There are the trouble-makers, the bitchers and the harassers and they come in all ages, there.

Those of us, who are fed up with it all, are withdrawing, more and more, into the comfort of our families and friends. We are losing hope of any significant change happening within our lifetime and are tired of putting ourselves out there as targets for the rabid pro-adoption faction, the industry, the eugenicists and the ignorant. We're just plain tired, period and I have the gray hair to prove it.

There are younger, more energetic voices that are working towards change, but they have a blind spot when it comes to the importance of the phenomenon of the BSE. Millions of us old, tired moms with the last part of our lives looking us smack in the kisser are being relegated to "well that's too bad...next?" status. One organization, in which I still hold a membership and have supported with my dues and my small donations, has, essentially, taken the BSE and blended it into the whole of adoption, mixing to try to dilute the unique characteristics of an era that is, sorry kids, vitally important if you want to change adoption. I feel betrayed because they are the group with the name recognition and it is NOTHING like it was meant to be, now.

We BSE moms, on the other hand, are finding ourselves having to pay more attention to our health, our blood pressure, hearts, and all other bodily needs that can be affected by stress. I have been criticized for not publishing the adverse and argumentative (and even hateful) comments, saying that makes me ineffective in what I am posting, here. What people don't understand is that this is how I can keep my voice in this issue alive and, by hitting that "reject" button, I do my health a biiiiig favor. The pissing contests and trying to reason with the unreasonable are activities that have taken the starch out of me on too many occasions. I don't want to be as sick as I was last year, ever again.

I want to enjoy what is left of my life. I have heard the same comment from many other BSE moms. We've paid our dues and the only thing that we want now is recognition and justice. Aside from the positive impetus this would have for change, we just downright DESERVE some redress. But, we are not in the mainstream of those who want to "educate" adopters and facilitators...who just giggle to themselves and keep on picking our brains to see what kind of crumbs they can throw to us while they proceed on with the program of separating mothers and babies.

At least, here, I have a forum and there are plenty of readers who have contacted me and let me know that something I wrote helped them. That's all I need. I don't have to conform to the questionable standards of this person or that and I sure don't need to run my blood pressure up, just to get on an unending merry-go-round with a critic.

To my friend, Honey, I don't fault you, one bit, in your decision to take care of you, first. I've been there, done that, and will continue to do so. I'll just keep writing here and wondering about how the fishing is in WV. There is no need for either of us to die for the cause. Besides, the myth of adoption has already left a dead spot in our hearts. I think that's enough suffering for one lifetime..don't you?

(*For those who don't want to back-track and don't know what the BSE is; The Baby Scoop Era is a time period between the end of WWII and Roe v Wade, when a huge number, millions, of babies were taken from, usually single, young mothers and placed by adoption facilitators in secret, closed adoptions. The numbers are unprecedented and there has not been such a mass insult to single mothers since then. It still happens, but not in the numbers and not with the punitive pressure of an entire society behind it.)

Woe Is "Hateful" Me

One of those comments that I consign to the circular file made me laugh before I hit the "reject" button. It was one of those that went, "blah, blah, blah Hateful, blah blah blah dumpster babies, blah blah shame on you." I am quite sure that this adoption-besotted person who took umbrage thinks that she/he was very original and got me told in spades. Laughing out loud here, but I think they only know one song, and that one, they sing off-tune. I will make another small effort at educating the uneducable. Why do I bother?

You want to see hateful? Go to some group sites I won't name here and see what a wannabe adopter posts when a mother wakes up to her love and caring for her own child and decides to keep and raise that child. You would think that, rather than exercising her rights as that baby's TRUE and legal mother, that she had murdered Mother Teresa. The hate and the self-entitlement ooze out in flows like lava from the Hawaiian volcanoes and just about as red-hot.

You want to feel like the object of hate? Have your adult child find you and want to have a relationship with you. It's not just insecurity or fear....it's downright hostility and our children get put in the middle of it all, so it's usually we moms that back off rather than have our children go through such a tug of war.

You want to know about shame? How about being treated, even by members of one's own family, like you are the Whore of Babylon? How about being called a promiscuous slut and being seen like that by the social workers that are supposed to be helping you, even though you only had one partner or, for some of us, were raped?

Don't lay your hateful shit or your shame on me. If you try, you're going to just see them bounce off and lay there. I shrugged both of those things off a long time ago, and if telling the truth is hateful to you, then I feel very, very sorry for you. As for those dumpster babies, you are talking about a very small minority. How would you like it if I constantly referred to the adopters who have molested, abused and even killed the children they adopted? They have been in the news, now, haven't they?

Boy, I do love that "reject" button.

And Abraham Adopted Isaac????

There is another advertisement on the web that uses God and Christianity to support a church-based baby-selling business. They even have a price list that puts the highest cost on Caucasian infants and the lowest on minority babies. The church-based agencies are the worst, using the onus of the "sin of fornication" and "unwed motherhood" to self-righteously rope in mothers-to-be and the parents of young women who loved, not wisely, but too well. Nothing like shame, blame, sin and fear of hellfire and what one's fellow church members might think to reel in the mother-to-be and her family.

Combine this with the intolerance that these fundamentalists have against the right to choose not to carry a pregnancy to term, and you have got a cash cow right there, all dressed up in the interpretation of Biblical text, usually taken out of context and twisted to mean anything but what it should mean. These self-righteous minions of eugenics are usually the ones who have the "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" in just about every community. Walk through one of those doors and you will play Hell keeping your baby.

I have read the Bible, several times, and don't see a single argument for adoption in there. I see a lot of "begats" and lineages and women who were barren being blessed by God and becoming pregnant. We've already debunked the Moses and Solomon stories in a previous post, so why is it that these people can put aside the importance of natural family as it is portrayed in their own holy Book and engage in separating mothers from their babies with such vigor?

The only alternative they offer to abortion is adoption. What about the third option? What about keeping and raising as an alternative? That's where the nasty part of Christianity raises its awful head...the judging and condemnation and intolerance. Who decides who is fit to be a mother? If God is all-powerful, then there had to be a reason that he gives a certain woman, a certain family a new little member. Does God, who is all-knowing, really mess up and put babies in the "wrong tummies?" Eugenics consists of making sure that future generations are raised by the "right kind of people" in order to achieve some kind of Utopia. The LDS is notorious in that area. That doesn't sound like Christianity to me...it sounds like Fascism. It sounds arrogant and unloving. It sounds like patriarchal dogmatism and dichotomous thinking to the nth degree. It sounds like someone wants us women back in the kitchen and the bedroom and the maternity prisons, barefoot and heads down. And women are helping to further this crap!

Jesus would have been appalled.

Writing For Change

They tell us, on the activism groups, if you write letters to newspapers, other media, congress-people, senators, etc., that, even if your letter is not acknowledged or printed, SOMEONE still reads it. I would guess that, out of every 7 letters I send to newspapers or online media, 1 or 2 are published. I hit the big time with USA Today, yesterday. Many others that I have sent have not been published but someone had to read them to reject them.

USA Today had a wonderful editorial about how the movie "Juno" stopped short of telling the entire story. It was written by Jean Strauss, entitled "In 'Juno' Adoption Pain Is Left On The Cutting Room Floor" and can be read at this link: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/03/post.html

I agreed to the fact that "Juno" is misleading and makes a mockery out of what is many women's greatest tragedy. Plus the NCFA is taking that specious bit of unrealistic cinema and running with it. I wrote about my own feelings and agreed with Strauss and it was printed, both in yesterday's USA Today newspaper where it was the lead letter and online! Yay for our side! http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/03/juno-out-of-tou.html#more

There are guides that can be found online about how to write letters to the editor. The papers and online publications usually give you their own guidelines, but I have found that, if you are passionate, eloquent and determined to make your point, you have a good chance of seeing your letter put out there for others to read and ponder. The industry had PR people that keep their spiel running and their misleading messages about heroism and good beemommies spinning away to reel in our younger sisters. We have ourselves, our keyboards and our passion. Our voices, votes and opinions COUNT. And it's easier than voting for your favorite on "Dancing With The Stars." (C'mon Kristy!)

To get to the more ridiculous letters that have been written in recent days...have any of you seen the McDonald's commercial where the different dishes that Mickey Dee's offers are sitting around a conference table, talking, and the parfait insinuates that the fries were adopted? Well, that has the adopters and their loyal adoptees up in arms. My reunited daughter and I have had a ball with it. She is my little French Fry and I am her "Spudmother" and we both agree that her father is kinda oily.

For all of those who told us to "lighten up" over "Juno" because it is just a movie and a comedy at that, may I say to those who get worked up over those poor fries, Hey, it's just a commercial. LIGHTEN UP. There. How do you like it?

My point is that if they can treat the tragedy of having to surrender a child to adoption in a comic manner, then the (un)holy institution of adoption can get the same treatment. The idea that adoptive situations have been treated unfairly is a total figment of someone's insecure imagination. THEY are the heroic ones, the saints, the (yuck) "forever families" and we are the brood mares that got kicked to the curb.

Only we didn't go down the drain and disappear the way they wanted us to and that has scared them all. GOOD. Now lets keep up the pressure. Write your letters. You don't have to be Emily Bronte or Stephen King...just write what you would say. Use a dictionary, spell-check, grammar-check and a thesaurus if you think you need help. Don't worry about dangling participles or ending a sentence with a preposition...that's not important. But write, write, write. Because, whether or not you are published, whether or not the recipient replies, you are reaching someone. Hopefully, somewhere, a young woman who is unexpectedly pregnant might read and reconsider contacting that adoption agency.

I know so many of you who have a powerful story to tell. Reach out and tell that story.

One More Time With The Religious Angle

Now, the religious pundits, in order to further adoption, are referring to all of us as "adopted" by God. Explain to me how, if God created us, he then was forced to adopt us? That makes no sense, Brother Evangelical and Sister Proselytizer.

The talk about religion has brought me back to the stories I was taught from the Bible when I was growing up. I know that Moses, though claimed by the Egyptian Princess who found him floating in the bull rushes, was raised by his own mother who was hired to be his wet nurse and nanny, and returned to his own roots and heritage as an adult. I know that the first surrogate mother, Hagar, was turned out into the dessert with her son when God granted Sarah a child.

But the story that pro-adoptionists use that irks me the most is the story of Solomon and the two women. These women were eking out a life by prostituting themselves and both had given birth. One woman's baby died and she switched babies, during the night and laid claim to the healthy, living child. The true mother took her complaint before King Solomon who came up with the idea to "cleave the infant in two and give one part to each woman." Of course, the true mother was willing to renounce her claim to save her child's life.

This is what the adoptionists use to promulgate the "mother-heroine" falsehood on the women in a vulnerable position.What the adoptionists don't go on to say is that Solomon, in his great, God-given wisdom, decreed that the true mother had proven herself and should have the infant, whole and healthy, for herself. He didn't go into an adoption scenario but recognized that the true mother and her baby belonged together.

Now, someone tell me how can and dare the religious leaders of the present day use the Bible to justify adoption? Oh....The scene at the crucifixion where He says, "Mother, behold your son?" John WAS her son...Jesus' half brother and son of Joseph. Some biblical scholars refute this, but there is good evidence that John was, indeed, Mary's true son.

You can "proof text" using scripture until you go blind and you will still not be able to prove, to my satisfaction, that God likes adoption. God doesn't put babies into the wrong tummies and all those "begats" in the Old Testament, right down to including the lineage of Jesus' family is pure proof, if you want to use it that way, that the natural family and heritage is very important to the Supreme Being. Every time I see adopters and facilitators using the Christian religion to further their cause, I think of the protagonists in Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale." God/Dess Help Us All, if it should ever come to that.

I have found the more rabid religious to be also more prone to thinking eugenically. They have their own idea of Utopia and it includes children being raised by the "right kind" of people. You just have to investigate the Mormon Empire to see that threat being raised. The LDS are among the worst when it comes to adoption, even to including a "sealing ceremony" that, supposedly, binds the child to the adopters and negates every connection with natural kin. THAT is scary. And Catholic Charities is doing the "distancing dance" for its part in the eugenics of the BSE. What goes around, comes around.

We have a very important battle on our hands...the fight for the survival of the natural family. If certain people, Newt Gingrich, for instance, had their way, we would have to be licensed to have babies. And Ronald Reagan stated that every unmarried woman who had a second child should have that child taken from her. Don't think that rigid, dogmatic thinking, encouraged by the Christian Coalition among others, isn't affecting this nation's reproductive freedoms. The battle is just beginning and using the Bible to push it is stupid and downright dirty pool.

Living Life Forward

Soren Kierkegaard - "Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward."



Some good women have spent a lot of time and effort in researching what happened to those of us who had children taken for adoption in the BSE. Understanding the past is vital to making any kind of change or knowing how to proceed into the future. We are all the sum total of our past personal experiences as much as from our genetics, races, education and beliefs.



For some of us, living our lives forward has been a struggle. We, for a while there, had to live in denial of our past to even be able to live in the moment. We had to suppress something so intensely personal and primal that many of us lost our way in living our lives and finding our way back has been both painful and emancipating. We have awakened from that sleep, looked back, and realized that we live in a present day where we are neither acknowledged nor understood by many and hated and feared by others.



Our increased self-awareness is threatening to those who profited from our painful losses and those who gained that which we lost...our children. We are either the objects of intense need or entrenched resentment to our adult children. We are caught in the middle of a social construct, a myth of draconian proportions and we are spending our time, in the present day, fighting our way out of that mire that is called adoption.



I wrote that I was looking towards our move to the north, to retirement and to a rest from the pressure and the constant battles for recognition, change and redress. I want to live "forward." But I wonder if I will ever be able to do that, completely, as long as the BSE is ignored, absorbed like the Borg, and never spoken to by those who are in power in our nation. Because there was a BSE, mothers of the recent past and mothers of today are subject to the idea of adoption as a lovely thing, a wonderful "gift" and a "perfect solution," when it is anything but those things. Coercion that is gentle and suggestive "conditioning" today, is built on the harsher and more forceful "counseling" that we of the BSE received as we were punished for our "sin" and "treated" for our "aberrations." And, we are seeing a dangerous trend backwards towards more intense coercion in recent days.



I will go to that place north of here with my husband, and I will enjoy him, our life together and my children and their progeny. I will paint, travel and read and watch the seasons change. But I so hope that, before my time is over, there will be some kind of an official statement that will be our vindication, our final justice and an impetus for real change...not tepid "reform," but change that will really mean something...change that will halt this trend towards the disregard for natural family ties. That kind of change would really be living a life forward, for all of us.

PS: Check out tomorrow's issue of USA Today. They will be printing a letter I wrote about how unfunny "Juno" really is.

It's a Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad World

DH has promised me that this is the last summer I will have to spend in Florida. I am holding him to this promise. With his mother becoming more and more frail, at age 93, and the area in which we live becoming more crowded, ruder, more crime-ridden and over-developed, it is time for us to move on. Add in the fact that Florida is one of the WORST states for natural moms and an "adoption Heaven" for adopters and facilitators and you can see why I want to head for the hills.

Retirement, to me, may well include my retirement from the arena of natural family preservation. Oh, I will always be anti-adoption, but getting out here, stating my feelings and the facts as they present themselves might go by the wayside. The anger and seething venom that is thrown at the natural mother, even by our children and sister "good beemommies," is becoming a boring nuisance. Since I have reached a good relationship with my own reunited children, I am content to let the rest think of me as they will and hit the "reject" button when I don't want to fool with the foolish.

Right now, I feel like that line from the song, "Stuck In The Middle." "Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you." Being disparaged, constantly challenged by those who are ignorant of the true experience of the natural mother and watching the heads around me grow grayer every day with not a lot of progress made towards getting understanding from the general public is becoming tiresome. It makes me feel like the vulnerable young girl who was forced to deny her own motherly instincts and surrender her children, again. At least, now, years later, most of us are learning to understand what actually happened to us. That, in and of itself, is some kind of progress.

I have reached an age where what others think of me isn't that important anymore. I have the love and respect of my husband, children, family and close friends and that is enough for me. If I say something on this blog that frosts somebody's Fritos, then too bad, so sad. I call it like I see it. I have also reached the age when I want to enjoy the last part of my life. I want to spend time with my husband, doing the things we enjoy. I want to be free to visit my children, read my books, paint my pictures, travel and not worry about the rest of the nasty world of adoption. I want to go north, to a place where the developers have yet to ruin the landscape and chase off the wildlife...where there are four real seasons (for now, anyway) and where there is elbow room between me and my neighbors.

I don't want to deal with vindictive adopters and loyal, grateful, controlling adoptees. I don't want to dance around all the different factions in the natural family preservation movement, doing my damndest not to offend (well, there are a couple I don't mind offending, truth be told) and I don't want to constantly have to explain myself to the world of these nasties. It is a very sad world when people cannot understand the idea of the BSE and the grief that we moms carry with us for life.

I see society heading down a dark and dismal road, where the natural family, blood-connected, is disregarded and social engineering is all the rage. I see the picture of eugenics as portrayed in the novel, "The Handmaid's Tale" coming true because we, as a nation, are allowing it. Adopters and adoptees are all around me and they seem to be dividing and multiplying like amoebas. The day when a child, deserted by or having lost their parents, is taken in by extended family with love and without rancor seems to be receding into the past. Self-proclaimed "experts" are telling us that heritage and genetics don't matter, that anyone can be a parent and that giving birth is no biggie. WRONG!

And, every time we empowered moms post to a blog or an open forum, we are attacked and denigrated and every word we say is denied by those who desperately want to keep the mythology alive. It has become a very, very sad world, indeed.

"How Dare" I Say It?

Usually, when I get the irate comments from the pro-adoptionists, I just delete and ignore. It's usually an adopter who doesn't want to hear the truth or an adoptee who is terrified of knowing the truth. This last comment to which I address this post was from someone who was adopted and, is properly "grateful," and wants to know "how dare I say I hate adoption." Now isn't that special?

You know what, Honey? You are not required to be grateful for what any child raised by their natural family takes for granted. It is every child's right to have food, shelter, medical care, nurture and guidance. The people who adopted you did themselves a favor. Adoption isn't about a home for a child, in most instances, but about a child for a home. In this self-serving, self-entitled, greedy world of ours where people think they can play God and mothers are seen as nothing more than disposable vessels, I think I can hate adoption all I like and I have the constitutional right to put it in print if I so choose.

If you were to have people tell you that you are unfit to raise your own children just because you might be young and single, and be coerced into signing papers that break your heart into a million pieces, you might say the same thing. Adoption, American-style is all about the money and eugenics and social mythology. It is NOT a win-win "solution" to any perceived "problem" and neither infertility nor the desire to be seen as saintly rescuers gives anyone entitlement to the child of another woman.

For me, adoption has been nothing but a tragedy, a loss, a process of grief and pain and scars that will always be there. I have seen mothers coerced, scammed and living their lives in pain while being denigrated by the very people who profit from the mother's misfortune. I have seen adoptees feeling adrift, different, out of place, insecure and rejected and told lies by the very people they call "parents." I have seen them mourn the loss of their heritage in silence.

I have seen formerly decent, caring people turn into obsessed, insecure, possessive neurotics in order to retain the title of "only mom." I have seen these people treat the source of their "joy in a child" like road trash, with hatred and fear. I've seen mothers of adoption loss kicked to the curb by their adult children just because these so-called adults think they have the right and have believed all the lies they were told or just in the name of "loyalty" to their adopters.

I have seen so-called "open" adoptions slam shut in the face of a mother who is still wondering why in the world she ever signed those benighted papers in the first place, a mother who bought into the adoption mythology and then awoke from her dream to the reality of her loss. One such mother took her own life after that happened.

Yep, I said it before and I'll say it again, because, just like a *"Jellical Cat," I can and because I dare...I HATE ADOPTION. If that bothers you, then I'd advise you not to read here, because I say that a lot.

(*Above reference from the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical "Cats" with lyrics from t s eliot's poetry)

Knowing What We've Missed

This handsome young man with that "deer in the headlights" look in his eyes is my only grandson, KC. He is in Iraq where this picture was taken, working as a transportation specialist and, unfortunately, is a target since he is responsible for moving combat vehicles from Kuwait into Bagdad.

I met him for the first time in 1993 after his mother and I reunited. He was 13, then, and covered with freckles that would eventually fade but are a family trait. It was hard to get close to KC. He had the same confused loyalties with which his mother was struggling, was dealing with his parent's divorce as well, but he was willing to give it a go. His younger sister was only 7 at the time and she jumped right in there.

But he didn't stay aloof for long. He knew that I loved him and he eventually became more comfortable with me and he has married and given me a precious great-grandson and another great-grand, gender unknown, is on the way.

I look at his face and I can see a slight resemblance to his father, but I see so much of my family, his mom, both my maternal and paternal families and a whole lot of his maternal grandfather who was also a bit baby-faced. (From what I saw 13 years ago, The last time I saw my daughter's father, he probably still is a baby-faced old jerk.) What I see the most, though, is just KC, my grandson, a good man who is facing a terrible ordeal in a country where we shouldn't be sacrificing our soldiers.

I keep telling him to watch his back and keep his head low and know how much he is loved and I think about missing out on his birth and his first 13 years because of the heinous act of adoption. He is now 26 years old and I don't want to miss any more. I want to send him many more birthday cards signed, "Love, Nanny and Papa Darrell." I want him to be around when his new baby is born. I want him to be Papa to his son's and "?'s" children and I want him to be proud of the family from which he came and to learn more about us all.

I just want him home, alive, whole and happy. Is that too much to ask, God/dess? Am I being greedy and selfish that I don't want my only grandson to be killed or mangled in a war that should never have started? Isn't it wrong that we should have someone we love placed in imminent danger for the sake of barrels of oil and a dynasty's self-justification?

I prayed to you when my daughter was born, begging you to help me keep her, and the answer seemed to be "no." I realize that, at that time, the machinations of others sort of overrode your decision to make me this young man's grandmother. But, can I ask one more favor? Will you please keep him alive and safe until he comes back to his home and his family? I'd be more grateful than words can say. And be with him, please. Hold his hand and send our hugs because he is smart enough to be very afraid.

I hate adoption, and I hate war, every bit as much.

Have You Seen These People??? An Adoption Crime

Don't ask me how I got this, but I have received a picture of the wannabe adopters who ran with baby Evelyn Bennett, on the advice of the agency's attorney, and have hidden this baby from her family and the courts for over a year. If you know them or know where they are, they need to be busted! This baby needs to go back to her family. My source will remain anonymous. Please note that said infant looks like neither potential adopter.

They and the agency, A Child Waiting, the subject of my previous post, "Busted," have used every delay tactic in the book, even when one court awarded custody to the real grandparents. When the day comes, and it will come, that the Bennetts get their little girl back, you can bet it will be the usual media circus, ala Baby Jessica and Baby Richard (who, by the by, are both happy and thriving within the bosom of their natural families).

They have left the state of Ohio, it is believed or have gone out of the area of jurisdiction. Isn't is funny that, if a natural parent in a custody fight were to do this, it would be called kidnapping? But let it be some "more fit than thou" wannabe faux mommy and daddy and everyone is pulling for these baby-snatchers. Just for once, in the name of all that is decent and fair, let's get this baby back to her family. I'm sorry these folks can't have their own children, but Evelyn belongs with her mom, grandmother and grandfather.

So, to the PAP's pictured above, those that believe in what is right and fair are not going to give up. That child is going to, eventually, go back to her real family and you are going to have to deal with it. Yeah, it might break your heart. But since when is your broken heart more important that the hearts that have already been broken by this horrific scam? I know a young mother who faced threats have only been hinted at and fears that have yet to be told, and her heart bleeds red every day since her baby has been gone. Those threats and those fears were used against her and she felt she had no choice. Well, now she know she does have a choice and she chooses to have her baby raised in her real family.

This is where I get on my high horse...when the pain of a single mom (not "beemommie" but MOM) is seen as inconsequential and unimportant when compared to the neurotic covetousness of the predatory adopter-to-be. Isn't it about time that people stopped hurting women by taking their babies?

Answers to Unpublished Comments

Someone likened my entry, refusal to read, and opinion of "Ithaka" to another blogger (prolific, it is said) who refused, proudly, to read Ann Fessler's "The Girls Who Went Away." Now K, Honey, no where in TGWWA is there a spewing of acidic hatred and venom against anyone. It is the true stories of mothers who were coerced out of the children during the BSE. If TGWWA had been a book of hateful tirades against adoptees, I doubt if I would have read it. Just to be clear, I have read excerpts from "Ithaka" and they triggered every painful part of my deleted motherhood experience, so make your comparisons accurate. I will not read the book in its entirety because I like myself more than that and will not expose myself to such a painful experience. If you are an adoptee who feels that way about natural mothers, then you don't need to be reading my blog, now do you? If someone doesn't want to acknowledge TGWWA or the BSE, that's tough for her. I hereby allow her to rock on with her bad self.

To the potential adopter who felt that the mother changing her mind was just as big an emotional blow as losing a child to adoption....c'mon woman...grow up! You are mourning the idea of a child. You did not gestate that child and bond with that child while it grew in your body. If you had done that and then had a stillbirth (a genuine tragedy), then I could feel more sympathy for you. But you did NOT lose something that was rightfully yours. The mother kept HER baby and she has that God-given right. Disappointment is not the same as soul-deep grief....not by a long shot. And as for your comments on infertility...yes, that is sad and I am sorry you are infertile. But, if you were missing a leg, would you expect another woman to cut hers off and give it to you? My husband and I both have chronic auto-immune diseases, but we make the best out of our lives that we can. We play the hand we are dealt.

Now, I don't usually answer the nutbars and nimrods, but the person who posted a 10-page, rambling, disjointed, irrational comment that made little to no sense, Sweetie, get some help, NOW. And take your medicines. I am really concerned about you. You are obviously unwell. The last time I read something like that was when a friend who has schizophrenia stopped taking her meds. I got an email from her that had me on the phone to her sister in a shot and yes, she was in bad shape when they got to her.

Now, I think that covered everyone I think might have merited, to some extent, an answer, without making my blog a sniping post for pro-adoptionists and bitter members of the adoption community. I like having the power to decide what I will and won't answer to or allow cause it's my blog. Nyahhh. Or, could I be......SATAN???????

Busted! A Child Waiting Agency is Exposed

The two links below are to the entire article about this wonderful development (I have printed part of it) and to a copy of the letter sent to the agency by the state. This warms the cockles of my heart, to the max. I am hoping that Stephanie Bennett's attorney will take this and run with it. If ever a young mother was taken in by unethical adoption practices, it is Stephanie. She has gone through many a court appearance, trying to regain custody of her, now, two-year-old little girl and the adopters still hide her and the opposition's attorney keeps stalling. Same shitty tactics, different day. Stephanie's case is the BSE , all over again, with the exception that she had her parent's support but was influenced by fear of another person.

I would love to see a similar investigation into other agencies, such as A Chosen Child, here in FL just for the sake of more regulation. They might also have a lot to answer to, but then, this entire state is a boiling cauldron of self-entitled adopters and those who cater to them. We have that famous 24-hour period in which a mother is given a chance to rescind surrender of parental rights. You can't get a good attorney in just 24 hours, especially one that will go up against the adoption industry in this state.

I am sure that, if the court rules (as they already have on one occasion) that Evelyn Bennett should be returned to her family, the same tactics will be used that have been used in the past....the would-be adopters will get the child all upset and then stage a hysterical scene for the reporters as they turn her over to her mother. Of course they will have to find them, first. They grabbed the baby and ran and hid. You know, if a natural parent in a custody battle did that, they would be arrested and thrown under the jail. Where's the real justice?

Get ready for another Oscar-winning performance by the arrogant, greedy and needy who feel they are more entitled to a child than the mother of that child. God, what a sick society it is in which we dwell. It is a society that makes it impossible for people to communicate in a manner that would prevent such a thing from happening in the first place...a society that protects molesters and punishes their victims....a society that practices eugenics with nary an apology or explanation....a society that refuses to recognize that most sacred of bonds, the bond between the mother and her child. We are in the death-throes of our time as a world power and we are still trying to rule the world by using the rule of supply and demand only with a human product.

The adoption industry and the government are hand-in-glove, involved in the flesh trade just as surely as it was during the days of slavery. The state DSS departments and the CAS (in Canada) are so taken with their own power that they remove babies from parents on the flimsiest of whims and move them around like pieces on a chess board. I once worked a jigsaw puzzle depicting two dragons playing chess with humans as the chess pieces. I can't help but think of this vivid picture in relation to the agencies and government entities that play the old game of eugenics. Dragons they are and dragons they will be. Follow the links and read all about it.

http://www.ohio.com/news/top_stories/16807056.html?page=1&c=y

http://media.ohio.com/documents/child.pdf.pdf

State seeks to close adoption agency
Ohio department to yank A Child's Waiting license; Copley operation to appeal
By Rick Armon Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Wednesday, Mar 19, 2008
The state is seeking to shut down a local adoption agency, citing numerous violations, including placing a child in an uncertified foster home and not documenting background checks.
A Child's Waiting of Copley Township was notified last week in a 12-page letter that the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services won't renew its certification and plans to revoke its license.
The agency is appealing the decision and continuing to operate, co-director Crissy Kolarik said Tuesday.
''We are going through the appeal process, which can take months,'' she said. ''We are optimistic that this will have a positive outcome after the appeal process.''
Working Mother magazine last year named the agency as one of the nation'sbest 25 small companies because of its family-friendly culture. A Child's Waiting, which has handled about 1,400 adoptions since it was founded in 2000, also was featured glowingly on ABC News' 20/20 a few years ago.
Sloppy paperwork
The state says violations indicate a pattern of sloppy paperwork in the adoption process. For example, some records are incomplete, documentation of background checks isn't included in files and mandatory face-to-face visits weren't held in the required time frame.
State spokesman Dennis Evans declined to identify any violations as more serious than others, saying they ''collectively led to the decision.'' He said the state had not received an official appeal from the agency as of Tuesday afternoon.
The state also notified all public and private adoption agencies in Ohio of its decision. In all, the state alleged that A Child's Waiting violated 20 adoption rules, some of them numerous times between 2005 and 2007. They include:
• Placing a few children in other states and receiving children from other states without first receiving state permission. The agency also placed several children without having permanent custody of the child.
• Placing a child in an uncertified foster home.
• Failing to document discussions with a child about injuries or determining how the placement was progressing.
• Asking the state to reimburse the agency for foster care training for individuals who were not eligible for payments. The agency also ''failed to make stipend payments to foster caregivers for training sessions they successfully completed.''
• Failing to make sure a child received appropriate medical care after identifying injuries. ''The child was removed from the foster home by local law enforcement due to allegations of physical abuse,'' the state said. The foster family, and not the agency, was accused of the abuse.
The state did not provide details about each violation. One violation was erased from the letter provided to the Beacon Journal.
Evans cited privacy concerns.
Kolarik said some of the violations ''were clerical in nature'' and others have already been resolved.
Penny Wyman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Child Caring Agencies, said the number of violations shows a pattern of problems.
''It's the details that keep kids safe,'' she said.
Families surprised
Some families who have adopted through A Child's Waiting expressed surprise at the state decision, saying they have had positive experiences with the agency.
Joel and Mary Testa of Cuyahoga Falls adopted their daughter, Zoe, in late 2005.
''They were extremely diligent and informative,'' Joel Testa said. ''We've referred several people to them and they've had a similar experience.''
Decision in case
Meanwhile, A Child's Waiting won a decision last week in Summit County Probate Court involving a contested adoption, an attorney said.
Teenager Stephanie Bennett of Canton has been trying to regain custody of her daughter, Evelyn, since 2006. She had agreed to the adoption but later regretted the decision. Evelyn a few months old at the time.
Bennett has alleged that she was forced into the adoption by the child's father and that the agency urged her to run away from home to avoid scrutiny from her parents.
A magistrate determined that there was no duress involved, Bennett's attorney, Jennifer Lowry, said. Lowry said she is appealing the decision.
State investigators also have concluded that there was no evidence that Bennett was asked to run away. But the agency was cited for several procedural and paperwork violations related to the adoption.
The state announced last May that it was reviewing the agency's state license because of the Bennett case and a history of similar violations.
Bennett's case was not cited in the state's 12-page letter provided to the Beacon Journal.
''I'm kind of glad that they lost their license and they are being shut down,'' said Judy Bennett, Stephanie's mother. ''If they wanted to be in business, they shouldn't have started doing things (improperly).''

Open Adoption Mythology In Action

This was written by an adoption broker 15 years ago. See the info at the end of the paragraph. Please excuse the language used.

"Biological parents in many locations are reporting that their supposedly open adoption have become closed once the decree has been signed. Adoptive parents report that attorneys have told them to promise biological parents anything because once the adoption is legalized they can do whatever they want. Some agencies are finding their adoptive parents making verbal or written agreements for future contact and then not keeping their promises. … The written adoption agreements may be solid but they are not legally binding, as determined by Oregon courts, because they have no statutory support. Yet making them legally enforceable will not necessarily solve the problem. As John Chally, Oregon attorney, pointed out in an interview, promissory notes are legally binding yet frequently broken” -- p. 266 of “Levels of Cooperation and Satisfaction in 56 Open Adoptions” by J. Etters, Child Welfare, vol 72, (1993).

Not too many years ago, a young mother who had entered into an open adoption agreement with a most heinous adopter (a story for another blog entry) was emotionally devastated when the adopter summarily closed the adoption and this mother no longer had any access to her child. The mother took her own life.

The paragraph above PROVES that the agreements signed for a so-called "open" adoption are barely worth the paper on which they are printed. Adopters have the power and the option to close the adoption without suffering any legal consequences in most states. Yet we have "good beemommies" singing the praises of open adoption without realizing that, unless they do things the adopters' way, they can lose every bit of contact with their child in the blink of an eye and will be able to do nothing about it. All it would take is the child showing a preference for the natural mother or the adopter just feeling "insecure" and that door slams shut in an instant.

Of course, said adopters use the excuse of "confusion and problems" affecting the child. The truth is that adoption is the only thing that confuses the child. And a closed adoption and a few choice words by the adopters can break a little heart as the child becomes persuaded that the natural mom just doesn't want to see them.

In some cases, that can be true. It can become entirely too painful for a mother to hear her child call a genetic stranger "Mom." It can be emotionally wrenching to visit and have to leave one's child behind. It can become emotionally debilitating to have to jump through the adopters' hoops in order to even get letters and pictures. For some Moms, it just is too much pain to take.

The crumbs that the industry threw out after the phenomenon of adoption reunions began is just that...crumbs. Nothing else has changed. A mother's and her child's sacred connection is broken and a family is forever changed and missing a vital piece. How those that adopt can justify "building a family" on the broken lives of another family is beyond me. Of course, they will argue that the mother "didn't want to parent." Basically, most of these mothers were convinced of that by the propaganda that is rife in our culture that says adoption is a win-win proposition. It's only later that they realize what they bought into was a large dose of grief.

Did anyone step in and do anything to support the mother in parenting? Did her family give her any options and help? Did anyone really tell her the truth about the pain she would endure? Did anyone tell her the truth about how all that love and back-patting she received from adopters and facilitators would end as soon as they got their hands on her flesh and blood? Did anyone tell her the truth from the persective of those of us who have been there and done that...that sooner or later, the pain catches up with you and give you a gut-punch from Hell?

I don't think so. The brochures touting adoption are slicker than most that come straight from Madison Avenue. The adopters are taught how to write those horrible "Dear beemommie" letters and the number given in the ads they post are usually either the number for the agency or an adoption attorney. The net closes as the potential adopters "love-bomb" the unsuspecting mom and there she goes, into the land of lies and living on the edge of pain.

Re-read the paragraph above. THEY KNOW what they are doing to you. THEY KNOW how little recourse you have, legally and THEY KNOW how to pull you in like a fat trout on a flashy lure. You'll be told that it isn't "necessary" for you to get your own legal counsel. You'll be encouraged to allow the potential adopters into the labor and delivery room with you so that they can take that baby, still warm from your body, and get out of there ASAP with the goods. Only later, sometimes years later, will you learn that you were nothing but breeding stock for them.

If you don't want to "parent" yet, then use birth control. If it fails, you have the option of a safe and legal, medical abortion. But, if you choose to give birth, then remember that your baby is already bonded to you in the womb and that baby expects YOU to be there for him or her...not some stranger. Yes, we are responsible for our actions and nothing could be MORE responsible than loving, keeping and raising the child you conceived.

KEEP YOUR BABY!

'Ithaka" Is Crap And I Don't Care

No, I haven't read it and I won't. I don't even know if I have spelled it right, but I have heard enough from my sisters and others in the natural family preservations movement to know that I don't want to get into this book that spews hateful cruelty at the author's natural parents.

Why is this the way with some adopted people? I really want to know? Why do they seem to think that we deserve punishment. Why do some seem to think that the only way they can be loyal to those who adopted them is to be cruel and uncaring to those of us who bore them? We are talking adults here...adults who have the capacity to reason and to incorporate the truth into their emotional lives. Many of them know the truth but don't want to accept the part that the adopters played in our tragedy.

Many of them cannot conceive of a world where young mothers had no autonomy or choice. Many cannot appreciate the power of the adoption industry, the brainwashing and the coercion, both brutal and subtle. Many can't imagine the desperation of a young, pregnant woman, set adrift by the very people, including the father of her baby, that should be protecting her. Many just don't want to believe us because, if they do, it will reveal the lies of their adopters and the false premise on which their lives have been built.

I admit that accepting the truth is quite a blow to have to absorb, but I don't see how reviling us, demanding that we kowtow to the adopters by calling them "parents," and attacking us as "passive/aggressive" and "bitter" can help the situation. I'm not talking about all adopted people, now. I am talking about the ones stuck and spinning their wheels in their misery. I am talking about one who stalked and harrassed his mother until she had to hide from him and seek police protection. I am talking about the ones who approached mothers who were frightened and took that for total rejection and thence to a judgment that all mothers are bad news. I have seen such vitriol and venom come from our own children that it blows the mind. "Ithaka" is almost a "how-to" manual for natural parent abuse.

I am fortunate that I have a good relationship with my reunited children, though rocky at times. I have had some nasty things said but I have also received heartfelt apologies and we have progressed. But I am so tired of trying to explain to someone else's adult child the reasons that I surrendered and what happened to me. I am NOT their mother. If their mother did, in fact, for no good reason, reject them, then shame on her but she's not me. There's an adoptee on My Space, right now, that hates mothers and adopters. Looks like she's an equal-opportunity hater. Hey, at least we're not getting all her venom. Share and share alike, I say.

If adopted people on other groups wonder why so many of us moms have retreated to private, or moms-only groups, they just have to read their own communications with us. They also have to cease making hurtful demands of us. We're only human and we suffered a loss that no mother should ever have to endure. Don't make it harder for us, and then, maybe, we can get somewhere. Or else, read "Ithaka" and learn how to really stick it to us. Us burmuggles really like to be kicked around...NOT.

Humility

In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool. Lord Chesterfield

Whoever said that youth was wasted on the young was so right. I would love to be young and know what I know now, and that is that I don't know it all. I can still learn. I can still be humble enough to have the grace to ask and consider and think rather than hanging doggedly on to one perception of any situation. While I am loyal to my friends, I don't always see things in the same way that they do, but I am open to hearing what they have to say. In any event, allowing my friends the right to see things their way is part of being humble and part of being a good friend.

Too many people equate humility, a spiritual value, with humiliation, or being made to look foolish in front of others. These folks are the ones who have a hard time saying, "I'm sorry," or, "I was wrong" or even, "I could be wrong but let's agree to disagree." In my current and only, last and forever marriage, we use the rule of humility #1...we'd rather be happy than be right.
If we can say that we are sorry or even agree to disagree and allow the other person the right to their beliefs and opinions, then we have a basis for a strong relationship. We are in our 19th year of marriage and I love him more, every day.

It is when we dogmatically and perversely insist on being right and having everyone else march in lock-step with us, that we do ourselves and others an injustice. I have not been entirely innocent, in my life, of having that attitude and I can see it in others because I have seen it in myself.

I want to tell one vociferous and very NON-humble but prolific poster on the Internet, especially posting on the forum of a certain older and established organization that purports to support the natural parent that, Honey-Bunch, you can call yourself a GoddessMother if that blows your skirt up. But don't try to dictate what the rest of us choose to call ourselves. If you can answer, happily, to the "b" word, then knock yourself out. But I and many others don't like it, won't use it and feel that is our earned prerogative.

Another thing I have learned to recognize is the emotional bullies among us. These are the ones we have to block from our inbox because they will harass and fume and spout until we either lash out or come around to their way of thinking. These are the ones who will play to the gallery and gather sycophants by seeming to see things their way. They want control and adulation and will settle for people being in fear of them.

Then we have the intensely emotional martyrs who live in the pain rather than using that pain and anger to find their way to a better place. These are the ones who will complain, over and over again, about the same perceived insults and injuries but will not learn from others that there is healing and a healthy way to deal with what has transpired.

Finally, there are those of us who have to be jolted, now and again, in order to re-examine their accumulated "wisdom" and recognize what is and what isn't real. I have argued points with people until everyone grew tired of seeing my posts. I have debated until my fingers ached. I have explained myself, ad infinitum, and I just said "WHOA!" I don't have to explain myself, over and over again to the same people. I'm not going to change anyone by doing that and no one is going to change me by doing the same in reverse. Hey, it's OK to let a disagreement stand and go on to other things. What a concept! I wish I had thought of it, first, but I didn't. Here's that "humility" thing again that forces me to admit that I got this piece of advice from my youngest daughter, Bless Her.

So, I can say that, in my 62+ years on this planet, I now know what I know, but I also know what I DON'T know. I do know that being right all the time is not possible for anyone, including me. Not everyone is going to jump on the BSE bandwagon with me or be tolerant towards certain other people. But that's OK. I'm going to do what, to my knowledge, is the best I can do and leave the others to find their own way and care about them all on their journey. Who knows what someone else might be able to teach us from their journey? Now, if I can just stick to this idea..................

Correction on Previous Post

I made a mistake that merits a correction on my previous post. I inferred that there was no one doing anything about obtaining a hearing for BSE Moms and that is inaccurate. BSERI, a reasearch and investigation group, is doing more than their part and seems to be the only organization that is. It is a closed group and, therefore, what they are doing, how and when, is not for the general public until they are ready. I agree with this tactic and support BSERI.

I also would like to tell the younger moms who seem to feel we are either wasting our time or being insensitive to their pain that they are not totally seeing the big picture. When you are confronted, head on, with your mortality, as many of us have been, and you have been a part of a MASSIVE and overt program of eugenics and discrimination, then you have to fight for your right to be recognized and heard. Our days are numbered and our lives will count for nothing if this heinous period in our national history is not laid open for all to see the ugliness and injustice done to millions of women and their babies.

Because they were able to do this to us, it made it possible for them to do it to you. SH** rolls downhill. They have changed the modus operandii but not the crimes. That we know. We are talking about public shaming and discrimination done to millions in one fell swoop, so please, don't begrudge us our justice.

Go Ahead, Make My Day

This is one old BSE Mom that gets grumpy when the time changes and if there is anything to make me grumpier, it would have to be the same old arguments about the same old subjects with no one changing anything but the amount of space taken up in the comments section.

Dear Hubby remarked, as he walked out the door into the unnatural darkness to go to work, that he was glad I was facing this day, unarmed. Sometimes, frustration can make you feel old, tired and ineffective.

I am about ready to go with "Barfmuggle" in her comments about the need for attention to the BSE and its ramifications and the damaged multitude that resulted. You'd think that would be reason enough. I, personally, believe that you have to go back to the beginning in order to make changes down the line, but, at times, I also don't give a rat's ass. Just let's have an honest look at the most massive eugenics effort in history because it merits investigation on its own.

There are so many out there that think if we address this heinous period of real history, it will take away from their experience and others, still, who refuse to see the parallels between the BSE and the Civil Rights Movement (and said parallels are as plain as the nose on Barbara Streisand's face) and would deny the fact that this injustice deserves the same kind of redress as any calamitous, historical event.

So, I am a part of one group that wants to lump the BSE in with all the other eras and feels "hurt" if we think that it was different, and another group who is making inroads into the investigation of that era and to NO group that is doing a damn thing about it in the way of seeking a public hearing. It could be that, until action is taken, this is all a moot point anyway. But, I will still sign my name with BSE Mom as an identifier and I will still, as my hair gets whiter and whiter, hope for that day of judgment when we are vindicated and someone will say, out loud, that we didn't deserve the labeling, the judgments and the taking of our children for adoption with such arrogant impunity.

And NO, I do not think that adoption will always be with us. If I believed that, I think I would start saving up pills. There will come a day when the wisdom of legal, preferably kinship, guardianships will be the law of the land. Dr. King....I have a dream too.

And while we're at it, could we please abolish this daylight savings time nonsense?

No Room For Diplomacy

With so many factions dividing the original family preservation activism movement, it seems that the old arts of tact and diplomacy have been tossed out the window. This has become such a self-serving society that a lot of people have forgotten that any movements forward in any cause happened when people were able to put aside their differences and work together.

I fear that the integrity of the entire endeavor has been lost in a quagmire of who's right and who's wrong and who wants the spotlight and who can't tolerate whom. Swirling around in this gigantic eddy, trying hard to keep its head above water, the fight for action leading to justice for mothers of adoption loss, especially those of the BSE, is going down and no one is listening to anyone who would throw out a lifeline.

The BSE is a part of all mothers of adoption loss, those from that era and those that came afterwards. During the BSE, the guidelines and strategies were formed that have led to the power the industry holds today and the social mythology and attitude towards adoption as one of the ultimate "good things" and the relegation of mothers to the pit of "birth"motherhood. Unless the injustices of the BSE are addressed, acknowledged and atoned for, we are just in for generations and generations more of the same old shit. At my age, I ain't gonna mince words.

There is no one "voice," no one heroine for the mothers of adoption loss. We are all experts in this field and we all have our voices. There is no rule that says we have to have it all one way or the other. There is no way that what we might present would be totally perfect, every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed, and no one person owns the BSE. We are all capable of doing research and reaching out for an ear in our government. I have written letters to editors and to congressional representatives and senators and even adoption agencies until my fingers are raw. I have begged and pled with young moms not to fall into the trap that was set by the early eugenicists and our silence. Some I have helped and other have fallen into the abyss.

Yes, I'm frustrated, confounded, disappointed, angry, and, increasingly, hopeless. That doesn't mean I am giving up, but it does mean that I don't count on others to do what I have to do myself and I, most surely, won't be enough to get the job done, alone. When it comes to diplomacy, I have failed, miserably. I will do better to back away from that self-appointed position (kinda arrogant of me to try to take it on in the first place) and try to figure out where to go, next. Sisters, I don't love you all, but I do love most of you, like many of you and can tolerate...well...MOST of the rest. The thing is that, unless you are trying to place absolutes on the rest of us, then I can work with any of you. We don't have to be bosom buds to do that.

Time's A'Wastin'

The Baby Scoop Era moms, and I am one, are getting older. While they say that 60 is the "new 40," we all know, with the certainty that comes with reaching or approaching that seventh decade in our lives, that we are in the final quarter of our time on earth. Many of us are retired or getting ready to retire, settling our wills, estates, making plans for the possibility of a need for assisted living...all those things.

And for those of us who lost children during the most heinous era of eugenics and social engineering in our nation's history, the time for justice and redress is slipping away. Many of us have given up any real hope of there being definitive action towards a public hearing and some kind of acknowledgement and apology from those in power.

African-Americans received an apology, Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated during WWII received an apology, the Tuskegee Airmen received an apology....where is ours? We are dismissed with a wave of the hand and the trite observation that "that's just the way things were back then." Yeah right....and slavery was "just the way things were" prior to the 1860's but that doesn't make it just or right.

This is another example of how little motherhood is honored in this nation if there is not a man's name attached to a woman's and if she is not wearing that gold band on the third finger of her left hand. The BSE was a time of no autonomy for females and no honesty about what programs were available to the young mom-to-be. We were warehoused like gravid livestock until the product was delivered and then sent back to our parents with the admonition to forget and sin no more.

Let me give the average American woman a head's up. If the current power structure and the fanatic, religious right have their way, "the way it was back then" will become the way it IS, now. If our tragedies are not addressed in a public forum with proper redress, then our granddaughters and great-granddaughters had better stock up on the birth control and trust no man. Right now, women have some control over their reproductive lives, but that will go bye-bye in a hurry if the eugenicists can make it so. Seeking justice, loud and clear, for the BSE mothers, and we number in the millions, will serve as more than just as a recognition for our pain. It will also serve as a visible and authentic cautionary tale for what might possibly happen if we are not very, very careful with our votes and our opinions.

Those of us who are in the final quarter of our time on earth need to speak up now and speak up loudly. Our sisters who are still in that dark closet of shame are invited to walk out into the sunlight with the rest of us and feel the warmth of truth, honesty and vindication. They took our babies, but they could never take our motherhood. We gave no adopters the "gift" of a child. Rather we were emotionally bullied into thinking that we would be toxic to our own flesh and blood or physically restrained from keeping our babies or even seeing them. We were not "heroines who did the right thing." We were scared kids and young women who were isolated and brainwashed and forced to enter into a most unnatural agreement. Even as minors who couldn't vote or drive or even marry, in some instances, we were still allowed to sign a piece of paper surrendering all our parental rights.

Remember this truism. "The more things change, the more they remain the same." Our time is here and we need to hurry because, time's a'wastin'.

Them As Don't Want To Know

My maternal grandmother was from the hills of Tennessee. She used to call herself a "ridge runner." She had only a grammar-school level education, but she was a smart lady. I remember talking to her about the Civil Rights movement of the 60's (she was a die-hard Democrat) and how it seemed that people couldn't see the injustice right in front of their eyes.

Her words to me were, "There's a lot of wrong that goes on in this world, and most folks turn the other way and don't look. Them as don't want to know, ain't goin' to learn."

I look around me at the people involved in adoption, on either end and see so many of "them as don't want to know." I see mothers cozying up to adopters and facilitators and undoing years of hard work done by many of us older moms as we tried to lay the foundation for protest against this heinous and unnatural practice. I see people who accuse others of "adopter bashing," just because some of us hold adopters responsible for creating the demand that fuels the market for womb-fresh newborns. I see younger moms coming along and booting us BSE moms out of the way and demeaning our years of experience and knowledge. I see adoptees searching just so they can attack their mothers rather than listening to the truth.

At a natural mom's forum, we had the usual adopter post that stated how she was offended by us calling ourselves "natural" mothers because that indicated that her "motherhood" was unnatural and "it would confuse adoptees." I submit that the only things that confuse adoptees are adoption itself and the many mixed messages they get from those who adopt them. It's like the ultra-dogmatic acceptance of one belief without even exploring another. It is the desire to remain ignorant if learning the truth upsets the status-quo and the adoption applecart.

Heaven forbid that the holy adopters might get knocked down off their self-constructed pedestal and be seen as human beings who coveted, didn't care about the pain caused to the mother, and became obsessively possessive when reunion occurred. Nope, let's still see them as the saints the industry and they have painted them to be. That way, the adoptee can feel free to abuse the mother and protect the adopters, regardless of the hostility and demeaning treatment they dished out to the mother.

Nope, we are not going to be able to "educate" a great number of people because they are, as my grandmother said, "them as don't want to know." We need to look to the general public with our educational efforts and stop giving adopters any credit for anything except getting what they wanted.....period.

The Veiled Mother

I know it must look like I am awfully lazy in writing blog entries, but I have been the recipient of so many Gems of Great Value of late and this short excerpt is another one. It speaks to and from my heart. Please note that I have edited the "b" word in this piece, but this woman has done a good job of "getting it."


From the author of the Burning of the Marriage Hat: http://www.burningofthemarriagehat.com/questions.html
"Invisible Veil"
by Margaret Benshoof-Holler

She could have been any of the veiled Afghani women that have been written about in the U.S. media since September 11. But the woman I stood listening to one Saturday afternoon last fall in Sacramento, California was an American woman whose veil was invisible, whose story had been silenced and hidden.

Her child had been taken away. It was as if it had died. Except there was no funeral, no wailing wall for her to pound her fists on and cry! The woman was expected to just get on with her life and pretend that she hadn't just given her child away.

With thirty-some years of internalized emotion still causing her voice to quake when she recalled signing her name on the relinquishment papers, the fifty-six-year-old woman in Sacramento spoke of the pain and grief of losing her daughter to adoption. As I listened, I was reminded that here in the U.S. we often deal with loss by covering up our emotions.

I was also reminded that the U.S. was bombing Afghanistan because we lost over 3,000 very dear people. No one, though, ever went to war for these women whose losses were in the millions of newborn lives. The exact number of women who gave children up for adoption during the era of the 60s is not readily obtainable. The numbers jumped from 50,000 in 1944 to 175,000 in 1970, according to one source. Another source estimated the number of women who relinquished children to adoption in the 1960s and 70s reached a peak of 250,000 a year. The stigma associated with getting pregnant out of wedlock then contributed to a need for secrecy.

The need to hide these pregnancies meant complete information was not always gathered. Thus the reason for approximates rather than exact figures. Nonetheless, it is unquestionable that a large number of women gave up children for adoption during the 1960s and reached a peak some time in the 70s.

And, if even half of the women who gave their children up for adoption in the 60s had banded together their voices would surely have been heard, but they had not been taught nor encouraged to use their voices. Societal dictates, including puritanical attitudes about sex, women, and pregnancy, silenced the voices of many women for many years.

When one loses a child, mother, father, or husband to death, there is a funeral and a time of mourning. That hasn't been the case for most of the 6,000,000 (*****rw)mothers in the U.S. who have lost their children to adoption. Relinquishing her child to adoption is looked upon as a single mother's duty for getting herself into that situation to begin with rather than a deeply painful separation of mother and child. In that respect, not much has changed since the 60s. Societal attitudes towards unwed mothers consider adoption a logical consequence to out-of-wedlock pregnancies.

Guilt and shame kept unwed mothers' voices stifled during the McCarthy and post-McCarthy era of the 60s, but a small group of (*****)mothers began, in the 1980s, to find the children they gave up for adoption in the 60s. They began to come to terms with their loss. It is only with the advent of the Internet that more (*****)mothers have begun to come out of the closet. Many still only talk about what happened to them with each other in much the same way that veterans of World War II and Vietnam only talked afterwards with those who understood what they had been through. Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms effect a number of (*****)mothers.

When President Bush proclaimed November as National Adoption Month in 2001, he did not mention or honor the large group of American women who have lost their children to adoption. He did not present a plan of prevention for unplanned pregnancies or a way to provide free daycare to help financially-strapped mothers keep, rather than give up their babies to the adoption industry. His strong adoption stance appears to fall closely in line with one of his apparent supporters-the Edna Gladney Home in Fort Worth, Texas, which was one of the biggest contributors to the National Council for Adoption in their effort to keep birth records closed. President Bush didn't address the issue of opening birth records either. Closed birth records cut adoptees off from knowing who they are and do not protect (*****)mothers because the majority of them want to be found.

Even though U.S. women have progressed since the 60s in the areas of education and upward economic mobility and many single women are raising children on their own today, there is still a stigma about anything related to a woman having a baby outside of the confines of marriage. I see it in the way that stories about single mothers are reported in the media. Young mothers are made to sound like criminals if they want to keep their children.

One-hundred and forty million people in the U.S. have an adoption in their immediate families. Engrained views and practices pertaining to loss, sex, and adoption help keep many, like the (*****)mother in Sacramento, veiled and hidden. In this respect, the U.S. tends to fall behind every other industrialized country, most of which have stopped separating the natural mother from her child after it is born except in extreme situations.

The woman that I stood listening to in Sacramento was coerced into giving her child up for adoption in the 60s. She was then encouraged to keep the whole thing hidden. Her story stayed that way for over thirty years. It is time that we recognize and honor her motherhood.

"Invisible Veil" © copyright 2002 by Margaret Benshoof-Holler

From The Heart Of An Adoptee

Celeste has asked us to post this where people might read it. I am very moved by her words.

What If?
©2008 Celeste Billhartz www.themothersproject.com

I used to be for adopting. That’s what happened to me. My single mother gave birth to me and I was adopted. Just like millions of other kids. Most of us went to good homes and had good lives.
Many of us think otherwise, now. I guess the biggest reason is this: our mothers never got over losing their babies.

Why is it still socially acceptable to take babies from young mothers when we know, now, they will never get over the loss?

Think back to your first pregnancy. What if you were constantly badgered and told you had no business keeping your baby because you were single, and too young, and too poor to provide for him/her, that a married couple is waiting to provide him/her a much better life, and you are selfish for wanting to keep your baby?

What if, in that 9 months of psychological duress and brain-washing, you began to doubt your natural instincts to be a good mother? What if you believed that all the adults in your life knew best -- so, you signed an agreement to surrender your baby?

Remember how you felt about your baby, after giving birth? Would you have wanted to keep him/her – no matter what agreement you signed months, or weeks, or days before?
Today, as in our mothers’ day, most girl/mothers change their minds, after giving birth, but everyone around them demands that they honor that agreement. The young mothers want to keep their babies! Nobody listens, nobody cares, because adopters -- checks in hand and names picked out -- are waiting for their babies.

I urge single young women to keep their babies. DON’T SIGN ANY AGREEMENTS, and read everything you do sign at every agency, health center or religious organization.
I urge /grandmothers/aunts/cousins to help young mothers keep their babies within their families. If your daughter, niece or cousin is very young -- or irresponsible, step in and file for Kinship Care or Legal Guardianship. Don’t give her baby away! Please, don’t do that to her. She won’t be young and poor, forever.

I urge mature women to form support groups to help mothers and babies get a good start in life, together. Don’t hurt young mothers by separating them from their babies.
Finally, I urge women to NOT adopt, no matter how much you want a baby of your own. Adopting is legal, of course, and it is immensely profitable for brokers and agencies -- but it is terribly unfair to young mothers at the most vulnerable time in their lives.
Please, don’t be part of that treachery and covert theft.

Talking About Coercion

It seems that there are a few people coming out of the woodwork who are, seemingly, willing to listen to those of us who want to tell the stories of how we were coerced into surrendering parental rights to our children. I just finished sending off an account of the methods used to talk me out of my child.

It's funny that most people and even some of our children don't understand that there are more ways of forcing someone to one's will than just holding a gun to their heads. Although there are many mothers who were restrained, placed in prison-like environments or mental hospitals and who were forced to signed papers while drugged, never allowed to see their children or, in some cases, to even know if they had a boy or a girl, there are also stories like mine.

I consider my coercion a conspiracy by three parties; my parents/family, the social workers for the home and the state agency and the Bible-Belt society in which I lived. People see the 60's as an era of "free love" and open-mindedness, but that was only in more, shall we say, advanced locales. Hippies were a small portion of the population. Where I came from, you at least pretended to be a virgin until you were married, birth control was unavailable and the only safe, medical abortions available were out of the reach, financially, of the rank and file. Back-alley abortions were too scary to risk for most of us.

My family was adamant that I would surrender. My father made the statement that I would not be "bringing any bastard babies into his home." I look back at that and see that my father, a serial philanderer, had no room to talk, but remember that I was 16. My mother was also wanting me to return to her a "born-again virgin" and to fulfill her dreams for me. I was told I would have no place to go with my baby and that we would eventually starve to death. I wasn't the most sophisticated person in the world and I believed that.

None of the social workers that "counseled" me ever mentioned that there were programs provided that would have helped me. No one told be about the fact that teens could be emancipated if their parents were not supportive. Nope, all they wanted was to get their hands on those babies as fast as they could. All they told me was that I would never be able to handle parenthood at my age and that I would be destitute and place my children in danger. By the time they got through with me, I felt lower that a snail's trail. I was told to go and sin no more and went home like a zombie with two holes in my heart that never, never healed. The scars will always be there, because, even if I am reunited, my babies are gone, forever, enjoyed by other women who felt more entitled to them than me.

To all you adopted people out there, please listen to your mothers when they tell you what happened and read about what society was like in the time that your mother went through her ordeal. And remember, too, that, for most of us, pregnancy was unexpected, but YOU were wanted and loved.

Thanks, But No Thanks

I have noticed a disturbing trend in the community of those affected by adoption...a trend to "soften the message" and to "compromise." While I think that a lot of us can meet in the middle in areas where we agree and put aside the areas where we don't agree, there is such a thing as asking too much.

Such an impasse, where too much has been asked of some of us old broads who have been there and done that, has recently been reached and we have had to stand our ground. What I would love to ask everyone in adoption activism and natural family preservation is, when is enough, enough? Where can we draw a line and say, "this is as far as we are willing to go?"

How can we be anti-adoption, yet pro-adopters? That just doesn't make sense to us. Those who adopt or who wish to adopt are the ones who are fuelling the industry that continues to enforce a social myth, has a huge congressional lobby and is part of the misleadingly named Child Welfare network. Many good, but financially disadvantaged people are having their children taken from them for little to no good reason, and many of us older moms, now reunited, are having people the age of our children demand that we pay ultra-respect to the people who adopted them by forcing us to call them "parents." Yet, these same adopted people will refer to us as "b****mothers."

We are being corrected by "professionals" half our age who have no idea of the reality of the experience of the mother of adoption loss, especially those of us from the BSE. We are tough old birds. We have been through the worst that our families, social workers, uncaring medical professionals and our own children can put us through and we have survived with our self-esteem and zest for life intact. Still, we are having our hands slapped by very young adoptees who erroneously think that, if we use the term, "adopters," we are disrespecting their feelings for their adopters. How can we make them understand that we respect their feelings but hate the self-serving act of adoption?

I have a friend at the YMCA. She is in her late 70's and adopted two children, now adults. She and I have been around the block, a couple of times, over this. She knows I respect her as a fellow human being... Heck, I even like her...but that I don't respect her feelings for the mothers of her adoptees (they are her "worst nightmare") or her act of adopting. She told me that women like me scared her to death because we don't allow her to maintain her fantasy of being the superior woman to "parent" the children she adopted. She is, if nothing else, honest.

The bottom line is that we moms cannot operate where we are not allowed to be honest and where we are not respected as the original and true parents of the children we had taken for adoption.

And let me make one other observation. When a person who is, admittedly, neither a true adoptee nor a mother, comes on a support list and starts asking leading and intrusive questions that sound like an interview, it isn't paranoid to suspect that person of ulterior motives. I am no one's lab rat. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, it has to be a duck. I doubt that many of us will go back to a place where there is this kind of atmosphere. Thanks, but no thanks.

Exploration of Exploitation

I am wondering if the government and pro-adoptionsts, at large, will ever cease using and exploiting the mothers who had children taken for adoption? It would seem we are still of some use after being harvested for our desirable, healthy infants. I was watching a History Channel segment of "Modern Marvels," last night. The subject was edible nuts, and I noticed how they used every part of the nut..not just the tasty kernel, but the shells and other by-products, as well. Nothing was wasted and that is the good, old US of A way, to squeeze every last penny out of a "product." I think that the industry has seen our babies as the "nuts" and us as the "shells."

The adoption industry is doing its best to recruit mothers of adoption loss to work with them, telling new moms how wonderful it is to give these usurers their babies. That seems to work with the more naive, those addicted to the pats on the back the industry and adopters give them, and those that just have to believe that it was "for the best" or the grief and anger will overwhelm them, ie., those in denial.

There have been moms recruited for "studies" only to find their words and thoughts used in pro-adoption literature and by the industry to see how they can use these bits of info to make adoption look better to the unsuspecting, upcoming mothers-to-be. That's how the so-called "open adoption option" came into being, a carrot to dangle in front of the mother's nose. One such mother, a friend to many on the Internet Mothers' Support circuit, had just that terrible thing happen to her. She recently passed at the young age of 63, of ovarian cancer. I didn't know her, but many did and loved her and, I am told, her story is a sad one. What was done with her most traumatic experience is criminal. I can't say enough horrible things about any entity that would do such a thing.

Then there are the poseurs, who haunt the support group boards, asking leading questions about the mothers' feelings and experiences. These people, who don't let you know what they are really all about, are carrion crows. They feather their "nests" (ie., books, master's theses, studies for social work and adoption agencies) with our pain and anger and are doing so without our knowledge and/or permission. Some of these are also potential adopters who want to know all about the thoughts and feelings of the mothers so that she can use the information to her advantage when she acquires her adoptee.

All in all, it seems like the facilitators, exploiters and adopters are going to use our poor, abused carcases until they are all used up. We are the food for the vampires of adoption and eugenics, and their fangs are firmly embedded in our jugular veins. We moms from the BSE have struggled for years to regain our voices and our autonomy, and they want us to lose even that, again. Our language is censored and our opinions are scorned. For other, younger moms, the realities of how they were used are just now hitting them and the shock is only beginning to wear off and turn into righteous anger.

The underlying beliefs of the mavens of adoption come out in the open, every so often, when someone lets something slip or when someone sticks their wingtips down past their tonsils. There is our current chief executive who would return us to the days of maternity prisons and wholesale baby-snatching and then there is someone like Rep. Larry Liston, R-CO, who just outright called any teen, past or present, who becomes pregnant while unmarried, a "slut." I don't think this elected jackass will hear the last of that one for a while.

We have to be more on guard, now, than ever, and that is not paranoia. They really ARE out to get whatever they can from us to further their own aims...increasing infant adoption and keeping us silent and submissive. Sorry all you eugenicists, adopters, wannabe adopters, agencies, social wreckers and other facilitators...NO CAN DO. Our days of hiding in shame and allowing our sisters to turn their babies over to you without a struggle or in an uninformed daze are over. We are respectable, caring, decent, empowered women and we will not "go silently into that good night (Oh how I love a dramatic phrase)" without drawing blood and shouting out our cause.

So, users of mothers, beware. We're on to you.

No Words Needed

Today, I turn my blog over to ...another blog! Someone did their homework and put it into a very readable format. This is a timeline for the way adoption as we know it, today, has developed and infiltrated the rights of natural families throughout this nation.

http://babyscoopera.blogspot.com/2008/02/marketing-adoption.html

I get a lot of flack, especially from adopted people who defend their adopters even though they know what part they played in the tragedy of their adoption, and those who think we can "educate adopters" about the fact that there is NO such thing as a "Triad." Someone else described it best as a lop-sided rectangle..at the larger end, there are the adopters and the army of facilitators that make adoption possible. At the smaller end are us moms and our children. Needless to say, we definitely are on the "loser" end and adopters and facilitators are on the "winner" end.

So read the blog above and see what a methodical and determined bunch the adoption "professionals" and the eugenicists and adopters really are.

HOSTILITY

Every so often, I get my eyes really opened to the fact that our surrendered children were put through a massive mind-f***. It is most apparent on the groups where adopted people and moms post together. Those of us who haven't had to confront much hostility in our reunited children get a full dose of it on some of these groups.

We are not talking about very young reunitees with post-adolescent hormones and angst still a-blooming. We are talking about adults who have held on to the idea of the careless, abandoning mother or who is in a bad reunion and decides that all us moms are demons from the underworld, here on earth just to give them a hard time. It amazes me that, when confronted with documented history, personal stories and the examples of what really happened to the majority of us, they still bring out that old "you have to take responsibility for your part in the adoption" bit. We can thank the adopter, Nancy Verrier, author of "The Primal Wound," for that one. Just when it seemed that an adopter was going to support what we had known all along, she slips that "mothers should apologize" zinger in and we are off to the races again, us against adoptee infantile rage.

Sorry, my collective babies...NO CAN DO. If you are desiring of an abasing apology and a blood sacrifice, then try to hang your own mother on that cross (although, if she is smart, she is probably keeping her distance from you), but don't tar us all with the same brush, for two reasons. One is that it is neither right nor fair and the second is that we aren't going to allow it.

Since the Hostile adopted people in question are at the ages that shows their mothers were of the Baby Scoop Era when they were coerced into surrender, we will address just that time frame. It's something that adopted people and even younger mothers can't even begin to understand. That complete lack of autonomy, choice and self-determination is an alien concept and one that many don't want to accept. Why? Well, because that might mean that their adopters lied to them and society lied to them and they would much rather believe the lies than accept the truth because the truth comes from US, the mothers who lived it and there are not words horrible enough to describe it. They want to punish mommy and punish they will if they can find a way. Luckily, not all are of that mindset, but enough are to let me know that there were some major lies being told to vulnerable, adopted children by the people who were supposed to have their "best interests" at heart. Some of the most heinous, horrific lies were told during the BSE and adopters and social workers told them with impunity.

Things have changed so drastically in such a short time, that younger women, including some of our sister mothers, cannot conceive of such a situation, therefore, it suits them to believe that it wasn't so or isn't important in the allover scheme of things. That's a pity because addressing the BSE would be one of our strongest arguments against adoption. Opening our children's eyes to the truth would be a wonderful side benefit and maybe, just maybe, they could purge themselves of some of that hateful anger.

Why haven't these mature, adopted men and women in their 30's and 40's who think mommy should beg their forgiveness and take their attitudes with meek submission been taught simple courtesy and respect? These are people who need a lesson in compassion and old-fashioned manners. And heaven forbid you intimate that the ones who adopted them might have swayed their thinking against moms for their own benefit. Where do we all learn the most where our own behavior is concerned? That's Right!!! At HOME.

This is why I cannot begin to say enough about how the BSE and the young, now much older, mothers caught up in that heinous time needs to be addressed, and given redress in a public forum and adoption condemned for the nasty social experiement it was. It still is nasty, but they hide that nasty behind the pink bow of so-called "open" adoption and offer young women "scholarships" and then turn around and call us all crack-whores and unfit. SOMETHING has got to change and we old bats with the flabby arms and the holes in our hearts seem to be the ones who need to get on our ponies and ride into the fray.

It just makes me wonder, with some of the more hostile, angrier adopted people, what that is going to leave for them to use as a target. Here's an idea...how about the industry and those who fuel that industry with their demands for healthy infants and toddlers to "cure" their infertility? Stop shooting at the wrong targets, my children. We're survivors and, even if you draw blood, you're not going to get us kneeling in front of you and begging your pardon. Mea AIN'T culpa!